


i pass myself down on my knees

by dickviolin



Series: save me from tomorrow [2]
Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Barebacking, Infidelity, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 09:21:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21251084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dickviolin/pseuds/dickviolin
Summary: blanket disclaimer for works containing sascha zverev. see notes for more details“This is- Dominic, this is fucked up beyond words.”The words would be something likeso you stand up in front of your friends and family and promise to love this girl forever, be faithful to her until you die, and then you get legless drunk at the reception and moon after your male friend who, by the way, you’ve been having an affair with for the past two years, and then when your new wife goes to bed you don’t go after her but go up to your lover’s room and let him fuck you raw.But that’s a lot to say out loud. And it’s stating the obvious.find me on twitter





	i pass myself down on my knees

**Author's Note:**

> hi,
> 
> as you are probably aware if you pay attention to tennis, olya sharapova, sascha's ex-girlfriend, has made credible accusations of domestic violence against him (including screenshots and multiple witnesses backing up her testimony). if you are likely to be triggered by things like that, i would not recommend reading her instagram posts/interviews with her; the details she has given are graphic, shocking and utterly sickening. 
> 
> i'm not going to take any of my fics containing sascha down. i don't want to pretend that i didn't support him for eighteen months before all this came out. i don't want to pretend that we weren't all duped. i want these works to exist as a record of the dangers of thinking you know anything about someone in the public eye. if we write fiction about people, we're actually just writing about characters loosely based on what people allow us to know about themselves. 
> 
> however, i don't feel comfortable writing any more fic about sascha. i don't want to receive kudos for this- please don't leave them- and i will delete comments if and when they are left. please respect that, and please don't read this fic. 
> 
> believe women. exercise caution. be good to yourselves and others. we are all fighting invisible battles. 
> 
> ~dickviolin

“I don’t have-”

“Doesn’t matter. Don’t need ‘em.”

“Turn over, like- yeah, like that-”

“I’m already warmed up. Don’t need to- just- just fucking-”

“Fuck, you’re so-”

“I know. Harder, God, please, I need it.”

“You’re so beautiful when you-”

“Shut up. God, just shut up, just fuck me.”

“I’m gonna-”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, sorry. Won’t last long, I-”

“Me neither. Touch me.”

“Oh _fuck_-”

Sascha collapses on Domi’s back. The orgasm is still shuddering through him, the last waves of pleasure coursing through his body. He sighs when it’s over. Almost as soon as he does, the usual feelings set in: the grossness, the sweaty stickiness, the hot pressure of skin on skin, the smell of Domi’s hair, the feeling of nosing at the nape of his neck. The guilt, of course, but multiplied by a thousand, because-

Because he’s just fucked Dominic, bareback, on his wedding night.

The wedding was beautiful. A stunning gothic church outside Nice, right by the sea, with the sun beating down on them. Kiki looked amazing. She looked happy. Domi wore a blue suit, and anyone else would have seen the overjoyed groom, unable to believe his luck. But Sascha saw what was behind his eyes and it made him want to throw up. When the priest had asked if anyone had any objections, he’d sat on his hands and stared intently at the pew in front of him. The reception came, and Domi had stumbled through his speech in French, and everyone aww’ed and cooed and Kiki cried elegantly, and then everyone got on the dancefloor and they played Abba. Sascha went up to his room at nine, slunk out of the hall as inconspicuously as he could, and he was about to go to sleep when the knock on the door (so familiar, he’s like Pavlov’s dogs now) had come.

He pulls out and shuffles over so he’s not lying across him. Supine on the bed, he can hear Domi stir.

“I feel gross.”

They don’t normally talk after sex. Then again, it’s been six months since the last time, and the circumstances are a little different.

“Yeah,” Sasch agrees, and he’s not sure if Domi’s talking about doing it raw or about doing it on his actual goddamned wedding night.

“Fuck,” Domi spits. Sascha watches him get up and disappear into the bathroom, and then there’s the white noise of the shower being turned on full-blast. He’d never do that before, either. Before, he’d leave as soon as he could, and presumably shower in his own room, or at home. _Before_, though, Kiki wasn’t upstairs in the honeymoon suite. She wasn’t there to smell Sascha’s cologne on Domi, or the heavy musk of sex. Things were different.

He checks his messages. The last one was at 10:30, from Mischa- _have fun w Domi, don’t get too drunk ahaha_. It’s midnight, now. Nothing since then. He flicks through Twitter just for something to do with his eyes, but he sees a tweet from Ostapenko congratulating Kiki and his stomach twists. He puts his phone down and slams his face into the pillow. Maybe if he stays like this long enough, all his problems will go away.

Domi sinks back into the bed next to him. Evidently not.

“It’s gross,” he says. “Doing it like that, I mean. It leaks out.”

Sasch sits up to wrinkle his nose at Domi. “That’s a pleasant image, thanks.”

Domi shrugs. Then, “We should get tested. I mean, I’m going to get tested, and you should, too.”

“Uh-huh.” Trust Dominic to be thinking of practicalities right now. Sascha shifts round so he and Domi are sitting side by side but not, quite noticeably, looking at each other. He even folds his hands in front of him, primly. Like they haven’t just had sex.

“I should-”

And it pisses him off, all of a sudden, a white-hot rage, so he says, “Dominic, what the fuck is going on?”

Domi stops, halfway out of the bed. “I- Sascha, I…”

“This is- Dominic, this is fucked up beyond words.”

The words would be something like _so you stand up in front of your friends and family and promise to love this girl forever, be faithful to her until you die, and then you get legless drunk at the reception and moon after your male friend who, by the way, you’ve been having an affair with for the past two years, and then when your new wife goes to bed you don’t go after her but go up to your lover’s room and let him fuck you raw_. But that’s a lot to say out loud. And it’s stating the obvious.

They stare at each other for a long moment, and then Domi sits down again, and he finally breaks down, sobbing so violently, so raw that Sascha draws him to his chest by instinct. He holds him tight. Like he would want to be held. Like he _wants_ to be held. Lets him cry and cry. He says nothing. They stay like that for a very long time, Sascha’s fingers twisted in Domi’s hair and Domi with his arms wrapped round him. The crying subsides, eventually, and then they are locked in silence. Heavy, heaving breaths. The room feels full.

“I have to talk to her,” Domi says at last.

“You do,” Sascha says. He releases him, and he slides off the bed, pulls his clothes back on, turns to go.

“I’ll call you, OK? I’ll sort this.” More of a question than a promise.

“Yeah,” Sascha says. “Call me.”

When Domi’s gone, he gets up and has a shower himself, then tidies his things away, packs his suitcase and checks out of the hotel early. They’re in Nice, and it’s only forty minutes in the car to get back to Monte Carlo, and _God_ is he glad to see Lövik and Monte and the puppies when he gets in. They all climb onto the bed with him when he finally gets in at 2:30, like they know he’s feeling like freshly-boiled death. _Dogs are good_, he thinks, as he slides into a dreamless sleep, _we don’t deserve them_.

Domi doesn’t call him, and instead, three days later, turns up on Sascha’s doorstep. Sascha knows before Domi even says anything that Kiki has kicked him out. He looks hollow.

“Come in, man,” he says, and stands back.

He still feels like the lanky useless teenager he was when he met him. Domi is so concise in every way, while Sascha always thinks there’s far too much of him- too much arm, too much leg, too much torso, too much Sascha- for any room to handle. He tries to be as gentle as possible with Domi. Except when- well, except then.

Dominic comes in and immediately sets about making a coffee from the machine on the counter, and while that’s pouring, he stacks up the random piles of mail that Sascha has scattered around his kitchen and puts them all neatly in one corner. He tucks Lövik’s blanket back into his bed so it’s not trailing on the ground, and he’s about to start on the mountain of dirty dishes on the draining board when Sascha steers him over to a chair and all but pushes him into it.

“Jesus,” he says, “Just sit down, OK? You’re the guest, you don’t have to _do _anything.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry.” Domi sighs and blows on his fingertips the same way he does at changeovers. He’d told Sasch once it was a nervous thing, and not to tell anyone else, in case they used it against him. He can guess how Dominic’s feeling right now. He can understand the impulse to do something, _anything_ to help.

“Coffee,” Sascha says, and pours two cups. He puts them down on the table and sits opposite Domi.

“So,” Domi says, and takes an enormous swig from his mug. “My marriage is over.”

Sascha can’t think of anything to say to that so he keeps quiet.

“I told her about us. All of it. About that time in Vienna when we were younger, and about how we- for two years.”

“What did she say?”

Monte trots in, blissfully unaware of the human drama occurring in front of him. He loudly laps at his water bowl and it goes some way to breaking the tension.

“She asked if I’m gay. If I’ve been gay all this time, if I was lying to her. If I was ever actually attracted to her.”

“What did you say?”

Domi shrugs. “I didn’t have an answer. We were having, um.” His face flushes. “It wasn’t like we weren’t having sex.”

“You could be bi,” Sascha says, and then regrets it, because that’s so not the point right now.

“It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s over. We’re over. She’s getting an annulment.”

_Aufhebung_ sounds grim and grown up so Sascha gets up to look for a chocolate biscuit.

“She wanted to know why I did it.”

Which just reminds Sascha how completely and utterly broken he is, has been, since _this_ started, so he turns from the cupboard and says, very low, very calmly, “Why _did_ you do it? Because if you wanted me you could have broken up with her, but you wanted her, so you broke up with me, and you married her, but then you fucking come to me on your wedding night and let me fuck you raw. Do you know how much it hurts, Domi? To be your secret? To be second best, every fucking time?”

Domi at least hangs his head and starts to silently cry. It doesn’t make Sascha feel all the way better, but it’s a start.

“I love you, Sascha,” he says, barely above a whisper.

_Fuck_. He hops up on the counter and scrubs his face with his hands.

“That’s not fair, Dominic.”

“I need you to know, Sascha. I’m not just…you mean more to me than you know.”

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” Sascha says, a chill in his voice.

Domi says nothing for a very long time, just stares at a point ahead of him. Then, “You know, I tried for so long to pretend I didn’t like men. Then you came along and- Sasch, I just can’t resist you. I can’t tell myself I’m just confused. I can’t like you any less than a woman. And it’s scary, OK? So it was all- I don’t know. Self-preservation. If you didn’t kiss me or look at me or talk to me, I could pretend…”

“You hurt me,” Sascha says. He wishes the words were hammer blows. Wishes he could make Domi feel his bruises.

“I love you, Sascha. I never want to hurt you.” He looks up, and their eyes meet. “I love you.”

“You need to go.” Sascha folds his arms and waits. With a single, miserable nod Domi gets up and goes. The door bangs shut behind him and Sascha lets his shoulders fall, lets the tension drain from his body.

It’s not _fair_, yes, and Domi hurt him, yes, but also- that nausea at your own feelings, that sense of disgust, the years spent trying to wish it away only for it to return twice as strong. Sascha understands it all. Domi hurts, passive and active voice, and Sascha wishes he knew how to say _I understand how you feel. I understand your shame. But please, never be ashamed of yourself when you’re with me_.

The words escape him, though, and Dominic is already long gone.

Rafa corners him in a locker room three weeks later.

“Roger say he text you so many times and you don’t answer, so he send me, no? Try to work out what is wrong.”

Literally, Sascha is cornered, backed up against a wall. Rafa might be shorter than him but he doesn’t fancy his luck against him in a fight. He’s tired and frustrated- he’s just lost to Tsitsipas, again- and he doesn’t fucking _need_ this, OK, but what choice does he have now?

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says, but he knows he’s only stalling.

“He say something is up after the Laver Cup, he ask you, you say nothing’s wrong, and now, you look like shit.” Rafa stands back to appraise him. “I agree.”

“Thanks,” Sascha spits.

“Me and Roger, is not always perfect, OK? I know it look like it is, but is because we talk to each other, no? If I have a problem, I tell him, we work together, we fix it. And we are married five years.” Rafa nods firmly, Q.E.D. “So, you tell me what is wrong, and we fix it. We love you, Sascha. When you sad, we are sad.”

Rafa has this look in his eyes, that look that makes you want to do whatever he tells you and give him whatever he wants.

“Fatal,” Roger once remarked, drunk, in a bar in London, “He’s got me hook, line and sinker.”

“It’s Domi,” Sascha says at last.

Rafa blinks. “Dominic?”

“Yeah.”

“Dominic Thiem?”

“Yes,” Sascha says.

“What about him?”

Sascha sinks down onto a bench and begins to explain. When he’s done, Rafa sits down next to him and considers the situation for a long moment.

“Is tricky,” he says at last. “Very messy situation, no?”

Sascha resists the urge to say something like _no shit, Sherlock_, and instead just nods miserably.

“Is strange, as well. Domi, he don’t seem like the kind of guy who acts like that. I would think he would be honest. Tell Kiki the truth, no?”

“I dunno. Apparently not.”

“He is ashamed,” Rafa says. “Is like how Roger was, many years. Did not like that he is gay. Is very difficult.”

“It’s not easy,” Sascha concedes.

Rafa nods, and rubs his thighs in thought and stares up at the ceiling with pursed lips. “Well,” he says at last, “What do you want?”

“Huh?”

“You want to be with him?”

Sascha blinks. “I don’t know.”

Rafa kisses his teeth and sighs. “I understand. Would be difficult to trust, no?”

“Hm.”

“But _you_ never say no to him.” Rafa turns to him. His face has changed, now, and it makes Sascha squirm. “When he ask, no? Even though you know is wrong.”

“No,” Sascha says, very quietly. “No, you’re right.”

The knock on the door. The sound of the TV fades into the background. He was about to go to bed, was trying to fall asleep to an old episode of _Friends_, but now he’s wide awake, because Domi’s at his door. He’s been crying, by the looks of it, eyes puffy and ringed with red. He’s wearing his pyjamas.

“I know,” he says, before Sasch even has time to open his mouth. “I know, I have no right to come, and if you told me to fuck off and you slammed the door in my face, I’d understand, but I can’t sleep, OK? Three years of sharing a bed with someone. I don’t know how to fall asleep on my own anymore. So please, just for tonight, can I sleep with you?”

Sascha goes to say something but Domi cuts him off again.

“And I mean sleep, nothing else, I know that’s all over, I just- _God_, I’m so tired. I don’t have anyone else, not anymore. Please, Sasch.”

_Bitte_, said at the ragged end of a long-frayed rope. Sascha stands back and lets him in. Domi curls up under the covers, placing himself demurely to the side of Sascha’s nest of pillows. Sascha comes over and moves things around, so it’s just them, no barriers between them, each with one pillow. He turns his back on Domi, scoots over so they’re not touching, switches out the light and pulls the duvet around him.

“Good night, Sascha,” Dominic says.

In the dark, Sascha can hear Domi’s breathing slow. He ventures to speak, hoping Domi’s already nodded off.

“I spoke to Rafa today.”

“You did?” No such luck.

“You’re not the only one who fucked up. I could have said no. But I didn’t. Because I wanted it.”

“Oh.”

“So, look, when you’re beating yourself up about it, which I’m sure you are, just know that it took two of us. We were all causing each other pain.” He can see the fluorescent numbers on the clock on the side, telling him they’re two minutes into tomorrow. “And, like, I made the first move. When we were teenagers. So. There’s that.”

Domi says nothing for a very long time and Sascha begins to suspect he’s fallen asleep, when-

“I’m bi.” Sascha wants to turn round and face him but he also doesn’t want to disturb this carefully-balanced tension they have. “I told Kiki. She said I’d have to tell the judge that I’m gay, though, otherwise we’d have to get a divorce, not an annulment.”

“OK.”

“And she asked if that meant I’d ever loved her, if when I was having sex with her I wasn’t just picturing you. And I told her I wasn’t, that I was always- I was always attracted to her, I always liked her. She was wonderful. It was just. You were better, Sasch. You were always better.”

Sascha clenches his fist in the duvet.

“But she was acceptable. I could put pictures of her on Instagram. When we got married, it was just two people in love. Not a fucking- political statement, or whatever.”

Sascha shuts his eyes and thinks of Roger and Rafa. They’d had to go to court, get an injunction, just so they could get married without the paparazzi climbing the fences of their villa in Porto Cristo. How exhausting, he thinks, to be the first, to strike out into completely new territory. The bravery. They’re braver than him, he thinks, braver by far than dodging questions about girlfriends with a shy smile and a non-answer.

“I don’t want to be acceptable,” he says, and he hopes if he says it some more he’ll believe it. “I don’t want you to hide me.”

“Then I won’t,” Domi says, simply. “I know my track record on promises is pretty shit, and I understand if you don’t trust me, and you don’t want to trust me, but if you let me, Sasch, I’ll be the proudest boyfriend in the world.”

Halting fingertips brush his back, and then a whole splayed palm presses softly against his shoulder blade.

“And whatever you decide, Sascha, I love you. That won’t change.”

“Go to sleep, Dominic,” Sascha says. “You need it.” He blinks away a single tear and feels Domi pull his hand away. He closes his eyes and waits for the abyss to come.

When he wakes up, Dominic is gone. A week later, the annulment is announced, first in _Paris Match_ and then across the world. It makes the sidebar of shame on the _Daily Mail_ website, if only because it sounds so impressively scandalous: an otherwise uninteresting foreign tennis player’s marriage ending after five days. Very Kardashian.

“Jesus, poor guy.” Mischa is flicking through _Bild_, for no apparent reason, while they wait for the practice court to free up. There are pap shots of Domi leaving a flat and getting into the back of a black SUV. _A _flat, mind, not _his_ flat- presumably Kiki got to keep the place in Lichtenwörth, as well as the house outside Paris.

“Yeah. Must suck.” Sascha tries to keep his voice even.

“Have you spoken to him?”

“Why would I?” he says, too quickly. Mischa looks up and gives him an odd stare.

“Because you’re his friend?” he says, confused. “And his personal life’s in the shitter? I dunno, Sasch.”

“Yeah. I’ve spoken to him.” Mischa’s still looking at him. “He probably wants to be alone right now. That’s what he- implied, anyway.”

“You should go and see him. Make sure he’s OK.”

“He has better friends on tour than me,” Sascha replies, and Mischa frowns, but goes back to reading about some American actress falling out of a club. If only he knew. He’s figured out that Sascha’s gay by now (Sasch knows because, a few years ago, at practice, they were changing ends and he caught him by the arm and said, _are you gay?_ And Sasch had said _yeah_ and Misch had said _cool_ and Sasch had said _don’t tell dad_ and that was that), but he clearly has no idea about him and Domi.

Just then, Rafa comes in, a whirlwind of activity surrounding him. Sasch sinks down into his seat and prays not to be noticed.

“Sascha!” Rafa calls from across the room.

“Hey, Raf,” Sascha replies, sinking further down.

“You sort it? Your problem?” His eyes are shining bright and he is covered in sweat.

“Yeah, yeah, I- yeah.”

“Good!” he replies, and then Charly ushers him away and he disappears as quickly as he arrived in a flurry of shouted Spanish.

“What was that about?” Mischa says when silence falls again.

“Nothing. Just, uh. Something that happened in Geneva.”

“Tsitsipas?” Mischa says.

“Sure,” Sasch says.

“He’s a nice guy. Rafa, I mean.” Mischa says. “C’mon, kid, off to work.” He gets up and claps Sascha on the back, and Sascha thinks how lucky Mischa is, with his uncomplicated married-with-kids life.

They meet again in Paris. They pass each other- or, rather, Sascha and his team passes Domi and his team- in the lobby of the hotel that they’re apparently both staying at. They exchange a smile and half a wave and nothing more: Sascha’s heading in, Domi et al are evidently heading out. But Sasch knows what’s coming long before it arrives. It sits on his chest like a stone for the entire day. Domi will come to him. He just wants to put it off for as long as possible.

“Don’t make me hit today,” he tells his dad. “There’s a gym downstairs, I’ll do a couple hours on the weights.”

“You’ve got to hit, Alexander,” his dad says, not looking up from his phone, hunched over the table in Sascha’s suite, analysing the draw sheet. Normally breaking out the full name is enough to end an argument, but Sascha’s insistent.

“I’ll do double tomorrow. Triple. I don’t care. Just don’t make me hit today.”

His father finally looks up. He can clearly see whatever’s going on is something serious, because his eyebrows knit. But there’s not really any way for Sascha to explain that he’s shit-scared of running into Domi on the practice court, or in the locker room, or somewhere like that.

“OK,” he says, with a face like he can’t quite believe his own words. “Triple tomorrow.”

“Thanks, papa.” Sascha pulls him into a quick, tight hug, then hops off to the gym.

Pounding away on the rowing machine and giving it his all on the free weights until sweat is pouring down his back is enough to distract him for a while. So is Mischa all but ordering him out to the zoo with Junior- Evi having made a beeline for the spa- and then his mother insisting they all have dinner at this amazing little Asian fusion restaurant she’d found. But then he goes back to his room. He’s alone. It’s only seven, so he can’t even go to bed, let sleep take over.

He plays a couple of half-hearted games of Fifa before switching the TV off and fucking around on his phone for a bit. Whoever runs Kiki and Domi’s Twitter accounts are clearly pursuing a policy of not addressing the annulment. There had been a short joint statement- _Kristina is pursuing an annulment of the marriage, Dominic is not contesting, both ask for privacy in this difficult time_, yadda yadda. But nothing since then. They’ve unfollowed each other, and every single time they post a banal sponsor plug there are people in the replies underneath- some clearly not in the least bit interested in tennis- speculating about what’s going on.

_She’s pregnant and it’s not his_, some people are saying. _He’s been playing away_, others speculate. _It was all a publicity stunt lollll _someone puts, which seems, frankly, odd to Sascha.

He closes Twitter. Then he opens it again. He has the password to his account, and even occasionally tweets from it- everyone, he figures, deserves to see the puppies- but mostly it’s his team.

_So bored and tired ahaha. Can’t wait for the tournament to start!!_

And then some tennis ball emojis, and a fire emoji, and the arm-flexing emoji, for good measure. He hits tweet and lies back. He has his hands folded over his stomach and thinks he could probably fall asleep like this. Or he could jerk off. Both options are tempting.

His phone buzzes.

_Bored?_

It’s Domi, of course.

Sascha pauses with his thumbs hovered over the screen of his phone. He shouldn’t reply. He should let the dust settle. Put some space between them. At least wait for the annulment to be finalised. Or something sensible like that.

**_We should talk_**.

_We should_.

“Fuck,” he says aloud. He’s really doing this, then.

**_Room 145_**, he sends back, before he can think again. This is dumb. This is really dumb. He should just jerk off and go to bed.

He waits in deafening, pregnant silence for minutes or hours. Then the knock at the door. He can recognise it like Domi’s own voice now.

“It’s open,” he says, and realises with crashing horror that that was what he said the first time.

“That’s not very secure,” Domi replies. Their eyes meet. The realisation dawns on Domi and he smiles, looks away, chuckles. “God. We’re-”

“A mess.” Sascha smiles too. Just a little.

“Hi, by the way.”

“Hi.”

Domi flops onto the bed next to him and Sasch realises he’s missed that weight next to him. And the smell of his cologne. And- God, _everything_. He’s missed Domi.

Dominic lies on his stomach and looks up at Sascha and smiles, his face splitting right open, sincere, generous.

And later, when Domi asks him, he won’t be able to say that that was the moment when everything suddenly became OK, when he suddenly became fine with everything that had happened. But it was the moment when a vital bit of his heart opened up and light flooded in.

“Dominic,” he says, so soft. “I never got to kiss you.”

“What?”

“When we were- you never let me kiss you. You never let me do it properly. I want to do it properly. You deserve it.”

“I don’t,” he replies, just as soft. “I don’t deserve it.”

“Domi-”

“I hurt you. I hurt her. I don’t deserve it.”

“Domi,” he says again, and it’s almost a sob, and for the very first time, he leans down and kisses him. “You can’t hate yourself for the rest of your life.”

He makes love to him. He hates the term but loves doing it, loves taking his time, loves having Domi on his back so he can see him, kiss him, kiss him all over. He loves warming him up properly first, fingering him until he’s crying out, begging for it, and until Sascha’s cock slides in so gently, so easily. He loves it. Loves calling out Domi’s name, whispering it into the shell of his ear and screaming it at the top of his lungs. Loves being able to kiss him through his orgasm, then jerk off onto his heaving chest, lick it off, feed it to him in a wet, open-mouthed kiss. Collapse on top of him. Hold him. Tight. Like he’s never going to let go.

“You’ll be proud of me?” he whispers.

“So proud.”

“Promise?”

“No. No more promises, not for a long time.”

Sascha kisses the crook of his neck. “OK.”

And it is.

_Dear Kiki_.

He tears the top sheet of the pad of writing paper off, screws it up into a ball and throws a perfect three-pointer into the bin. He can’t call her Kiki.

_Dear Kristina_, he tries again, and wonders if he should try to do this in French. No. That would be stupid. English it is. Definitely, _definitely_ not German.

_I would completely understand if I was the last person on earth you wanted to get a letter from. I would understand, as well, if you threw this letter away without reading it. And if you never talked to me again. And if you told all the papers about what happened. Or at least everyone else on tour. I definitely deserve it._

_I just want to say that I’m sorry. I hurt you and I did it over and over and I did it even though I knew I would hurt you. There’s no excuse for that so I won’t try to give one. I fucked up. I was selfish. You deserved better from someone you might once have called a friend. So, I’m sorry, from the very bottom of my heart. That’s really all I can say. I can try to be a better person from now on but I can’t undo the hurt I caused you. I can just say sorry._

_Yours,_

_Sascha Zverev_.

He thinks about rewriting it, or at least crossing out his surname (how many Saschas does she know?), but it’s done now. He sends it to the Paris address and crosses his fingers that she’s retreated to France, like how Domi’s gone back to Wiener Neustadt.

Three days later, a text from an unknown number.

_I forgive you. I forgive him. Go and make him happy_.

He cries so long Lövik gets worried and brings him one of the puppies. It is greatly appreciated. Dogs are good. Kristina Mladenovic is better.

Dominic wins Roland Garros the year after Rafa retires. It’s just like how it started- the kit’s even a similar colour, and looks much the same, streaked with red clay. Sascha’s in his box, Lövik yapping excitedly by his side as the whole stadium stands and whoops and cheers.

Domi walks past the Coupe des Mousquetaires, past the men in blazers, past the ballkids. He jumps the fence into the stands and then he’s right in front of Sascha. He’s radiating heat and breathing hard.

“I told you, didn’t I?” he says. “I won’t hide you.” He brings one hand up to Sascha’s cheek and kisses him. It’s sweaty and a little inaccurate and, basically, they’ve had better snogs than this, but Sascha’s heart still feels like it’s beating out of his chest.

“I love you,” he says.

And for the first time: “I love you too.” 

“Good.” He hops back down onto the court and does all the normal Roland Garros winner stuff, or as best he can over the crowd noise, which has just doubled in volume. Sascha can’t hear it. He scratches behind Lövik’s ears and grins and grins and grins. 

“I thought you were done with promises.”

“Will you just say yes, you fu-”

“Yes, Dominic. Yes, I will.”

Domi gets up and one knee is scuffed with sand, his feet sinking into the beach. The sun sets in a blaze of red over Monte Carlo. He slides the ring onto Sascha’s finger and they walk home in the dusk.


End file.
